‘I’ Newspaper: Hard Brexit Could Raise Food Bills by £50

Here’s a piece of information that the Tories really don’t want you to know. According to the article ‘Family food bills could rise by up to £50 a week’ by Tom Bawden in Tuesday’s edition of the I, for 10th March 2020, this could be a result of the hard Brexit Boris and his cronies seem to be aiming at. The article runs

A hard Brexit could cost a family of four more than £50 a week more in food bills, with meat, dairy and jam rising most in price, a study has found.

Researchers looked at the effect of leaving the EU with no trade deal and calculated it would push the weekly food shop up by between £20.98 and £50.98.

The increases would come from hefty tariffs on imports and the cost of increased border checks on food coming into the country. A hard Brexit is also expected to push down the value of the pound.

By contrast, a soft Brexit with a comprehensive trade deal would push the food bill up by a much smaller amount – of between £5.80 and £18.17 a week, according to a new study by the University of Warwick, published in the journal BMJ Open.

While a hard Brexit would put considerable extra financial pressure on most British households the impact on poorer households would be far worse.

“Food security in the UK is a topical issue. Over the last five years food bank use has increased by 73 per cent, and this could increase for families who are unable to absorb these increased costs. There could also be reductions in diet quality leading to long-term health problems, ” said Martine Barons, of the University of Warwick.

The research suggested that the price of tea, coffee and cocoa which are typically imported from outside Europe will be least affected by Brexit.

In October, Michael Gove admitted that at least some prices could go up. “Some prices may go up. Other prices will come down,” he told BBC’s Andrew Marr Show.

So more people are going to starve and be forced onto the streets so that Boris, Rees-Mogg and the hedge funds that currently back the Tory party can become even richer. And I’ve seen absolutely no evidence that food prices are going to come down, as Gove says. Though this should surprise no-one: Gove and the Tories are the party of greedy liars.

But don’t worry – Brexit means we’re taking back control. Right up until the moment this country, its health service, industry and farming are bought up by Boris’ friend Trump.

The Tories’ Brexit Cover-Up on Northern Ireland

It wasn’t a good weekend for the Tories. For one thing, Jeremy Corbyn used leaked Treasury documents to show that the Tories were covering up the effects Brexit would have on trade between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK. This was reported in the I in the article ‘Corbyn accuses Tories of Brexit cover-up’ by Hugo Gye. This ran

Jeremy Corbyn has accused the Conservatives of trying to hide the true effects of their Brexit deal, claiming it would put a border in the Irish Sea despite Boris Johnson’s denials.

The Tories insisted Labour is indulging in “wild conspiracy theories” after the party produced leaked Treasure documents on the implications of the Withdrawal Agreement.

The new Brexit deal puts Northern Ireland in a different customs and regulatory regime from the rest of the UK. The Prime Minister has told Northern Irish business leaders that if they are asked to fill in forms when transporting goods to or from Breat Britain, they should “throw that form in the bin.”

But the Treasury documents say: “Exit summary declarations will be required when goods are exported from NI to GB.” It adds that the Government “will need to balance the benefits of unfettered access against the risks of reduced control over imports”.

The dossier adds that increased friction on trade across the Irish Sea will increase the price of high street goods and hit business profits. It is the equivalent of imposing tariffs on 30 per cent of all purchases in Northern Ireland, officials wrote.

Mr Corbyn said: “For trade going from Northern Ireland to Great Britain the Government cannot rule out regulatory checks, rules of origin checks and animal and public health checks.

“And for trade going the other way from Great Britain to Northern Ireland there will be all of the above plus, potentially damaging tariffs. This drives a coach and horses through Boris Johnson’s claim that there will be no border in the Irish Sea. It’s simply not true.”

Asked about the leak, Mr Johnson said: “I haven’t seen the document you are referring to but that’s complete nonsense.

“What I can tell you is that with the deal we have, we can come out as one whole UK – England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, together.”

His own ministers have previously admitted that some form of checks will be needed on goods crossing the Irish Sea. 

So the Treasury predicts that there will have to be customs checks for goods going to and from Northern Ireland, despite the Tories’ assurances to their DUP allies that this wouldn’t happen. And there is the danger of a 30 per cent rise in the cost of goods in the Six Counties. And, note, Boris has offered absolutely no evidence to back up his denial that this will occur.

It’s more waffle from a waffling, mendacious, deceitful government, and a party, which has done so much to break up the centuries-old union between England, Scotland, Wales and Ulster.

Corbyn is right, and is the right man if anyone is, for sorting out Brexit and creating a lasting peace in Northern Ireland. A peace that has been thrown into grievous jeopardy by Brexit and the Tories.

Ian Blackford Shreds May’s ‘Strong and Stable’ Slogan

Remember when the Tories were trying to fool the public into thinking that May was ‘strong and stable’ repeating this at every opportunity? This was supposed to be in contrast to Jeremy Corbyn. It was a slogan that was particularly applied to the relationship with Europe. Europe, we were told, would prefer to deal with a ‘strong and stable’ Europe under May.

Mike sent up that slogan after it became abundantly clear that May is anything but. He called her ‘weak and wobbly’. Which is what she is. Instead of being a ‘bloody awkward woman’ who would get the best deal she could from the EU, she was reduced to following the EU president around pleading with him to give her something. She could not be told that the EU was under absolutely no obligation to give her any kind of deal or offer of one.

This video from RT, again of just under a minute long, show Ian Blackford standing up in parliament today to shred May’s precious slogan. He says

Mr Speaker, we were promised strong and stable, what we have is a government in crisis. A government that has lost two Brexit Secretaries, a Home Secretary, a Foreign Secretary, a Work and Pensions Secretary. A government that has suffered from three consecutive defeats in just two hours. The first government to do so, Mr Speaker, in 40 years. And now a government found in contempt of Parliament. Is it time that the Prime Minister took responsibility for concealing the facts on her Brexit deal from members of this House and the public. Will she take responsibility?

As you can see, it’s quite a funny video. When Blackford itemizes the various cabinet ministers she’s lost, their faces pop up below him while a tinkling piano plays sad music, like the theme from Love Story. Then the shots of May’s Tories are shown in black and white, as if it’s all in mourning.

But there’s a very serious side to this. The Tories have created a situation that has split England dangerously from the rest of the UK, as well as Gibraltar, never mind about the rest of the EU. Cameron did so solely for his own advantage as leader of the Tory party. It allowed just over half of the British public to be seriously misled by a ‘Leave’ campaign that lied about the scale of migration from the EU and fraudulently claimed that once we left, 350 million pounds a year would be saved and put back into the Health Service. This was plastered all over the sides of buses by Boris Johnson and his crew, who then denied that they had made any such promise at all. And then after issuing the denial, Boris Johnson, the man who would be the next Prime Minister then went back and repeated the original lie.

And with Brexit and the farcical deal May has negotiated, people have been advised to stock up on food and medicines, as these may be in short supply after Brexit. The curbs on migration from the EU will prevent badly needed workers coming to Britain to supply staff for the NHS. Not that the Tories are going to be too worried about that. They are actively running it down ready for privatization.

People are worried about prices going up, which will once again hit those on low wages, which the Tories have insisted on throughout the last eight years in order to keep labour cheap and disposable, and profits high for employers. Businesses worry about finding staff, and being able to export their goods to the continent. Or import from there the raw materials they need.

It’s a mess. And it is solely due to the Tories.

May was never ‘strong and stable’. It wasn’t even an original slogan, as the Australian spin doctor who came up with it had previously used it to garner support for the Country Party – Australia’s Tories – Down Under. And it didn’t work down there either.

May and the Tories have lied, and deceived not only the general public but also parliament. Meanwhile, half her cabinet appear to have jumped ship like rats before May finally goes down.

And that can’t come too soon. May should go down, and the rest of her wretched, deceitful, mendacious, vicious and incompetent party with her.

No, Tweezer! It’s Not Labour that’s Attacking Investment, but Tory Privatisation

More lies from Theresa May, the lying head of a mendacious, corrupt, odious party. Mike put up another piece earlier this week commenting on a foam-flecked rant by Tweezer against the Labour party. She began this tirade by claiming that Labour had turned its back on investment. This was presumably out of fear of Labour’s very popular policies about renationalising the Health Service, the electricity industry and the railways.

But Labour hasn’t turned its back on investment. Far from it. Labour has proposed an investment bank for Britain – something that is recognised by many economists as being badly needed. It was one of Neil Kinnock’s policies in 1987, before he lost the election and decided that becoming ‘Tory lite’ was the winning electoral strategy.

The Korean economist, Ha-Joon Chang, who teaches at Cambridge, has pointed out that privatisation doesn’t work. Most of the British privatised industries were snapped up by foreign companies. And these companies, as he points out, aren’t interested in investing. We are there competitors. They are interested in acquiring our industries purely to make a profit for their countries, not ours. Mike pointed this out in his blog piece on the matter, stating that 10 of the 25 railway companies were owned by foreign interests, many of them nationalised. So nationalised industry is all right, according to Tweezer, so long as we don’t have it.

The same point is made by Stewart Lansley and Joanna Mack in their book, Breadline Britain: the Rise of Mass Poverty (Oneworld 2015). They write

The privatisation, from the 1980s, of the former publicly owned utilities is another example of the extractive process at work, and one that hs brought a huge bonanza for corporate and financial executives at the expense of staff, taxpayers and consumers. Seventy-two state-own enterprises we4re sold between 1983 and 1991 alone, with the political promise that the public-to-private transfer would raise efficiency, productivity and investment in the to the benefit of all. Yet such gains have proved elusive. With most of those who landed shares on privatisation selling up swiftly, the promised shareholding democracy failed to materialise. In the most comprehensive study of the British privatisation process, the Italian academic Massimo Florio, in his book The Great Divistiture, has concluded that privatisation failed to boost efficiency and has led to a ‘substantial regressive effect on the distribution of incomes and wealth in the United Kingdom’. Despite delivering little in the way of unproved performance, privatisation has brought great hikes in managerial pay, profits and shareholder returns paid for by staff lay-offs, the erosion of pay and security, taxpayer losses and higher prices.
(P. 195).

They then go on to discuss how privatisation has led to rising prices, especially in the electricity and water industries.

In most instances, privatisation has led to steady rises in bills, such as for energy and water. Electricity prices are estimated to be between ten and twenty per cent higher than they would have been without privatisation, contributing to the rise in fuel poverty of several years. Between 2002 and 2011, energy and water bills rose forty-five and twenty-one percent respectively in real terms, while median incomes stagnated and those of the poorest tenth fell by eleven percent. The winners have been largely a mix of executives and wealth investors, whole most of the costs – in job security, pay among the least well-skilled, and rising utility bills – have been borne by the poorest half of the population. ‘In this sense, privatisation was an integral part of a series of policies that created a social rift unequalled anywhere else in Europe’, Florio concluded.
(pp. 156-7)

They then go on to discuss the particular instance of the water industry.

Ten of the twenty-three privatised local and region water companies are now foreign owned with a further eight bought by private equity groups. In 2007 Thames Water was taken over by a private consortium of investors, mostly from overseas. Since then, as revealed in a study by John Allen and Michael Pryke at the Open University, the consortium has engineered the company’s finances to ensure that dividends to investors have exceeded net profits paid for by borrowing, a practice now common across the industry. By offsetting interest charges on the loan, the company will pay no corporation tax for the next five to six years. As the academics concluded: ‘A mound of leveraged debt has been used to benefit investors at the expense of households and their rising water bills.’
(P. 157).

They also point out that Britain’s pro-privatisation policy is in market contrast to that of other nations in the EU and America.

It is a similar story across other privatised sectors from the railways to care homes. The fixation with private ownership tis also now increasingly out of step with other countries, which have been unwinding their own privatisation programmes in response to the way the utilities have been exploited for private gain. Eighty-six cities – throughout the US and across Europe – have taken water back into a form of public ownership.
(Pp. 157-8)

Even in America, where foreign investors are not allowed to take over utility companies, privatisation has not brought greater investment into these companies, and particularly the electricity industry, as the American author of Zombie Economics points out.

Lansley and Mack then go on to discuss the noxious case of the Private Equity Firms, which bought up care homes as a nice little investment. Their debt manipulation shenanigans caused many of these to collapse.

So when Tweezer went off on her rant against Labour the other day, this is what she was really defending: the exploitation of British consumers and taxpayers by foreign investors; management and shareholders boosting their pay and dividends by raising prices, and squeezing their workers as much as possible, while dodging tax.

Privatisation isn’t working. Let’s go back to Atlee and nationalise the utilities. And kick out Theresa, the Tories and their lies.

Open Britain’s Reminder of Brexit Lies

I got an email from the anti-Leave group, Open Britain, asking me to remind people again of the multitude of lies the Brexit campaigners have told, and for me to share their graphic on Twitter or Facebook. I’m not on either of those, and for some reason my email won’t show accompanying graphics. But I’m more than happy to show the lies the people of this country have been told by the likes of Farage, Johnson and Gove, to get them to vote for Leaving the EU. Here’s the message from Open Britain.

The realities of what a hard Brexit could mean are beginning to collide with the breezy rhetoric of Leave campaigners. Already – before negotiations have even begun – totemic promises are being broken.
•We were told there would be £350 million more a week for the NHS, but Leave campaigners are desperate to run away from this promise, and borrowing estimates have risen by £58bn thanks to Brexit.
•We were told economic warnings were “scaremongering”, but prices have risen as the pound has fallen and car companies are speculating about shifting investment abroad.
•We were told the EU would bend over backwards to give us the deal we want, but Ministers are now talking up the prospect of leaving with no deal at all.
•And we were told our Union would be stronger, but today we see the SNP once again fostering grievance to threaten the break up of the UK.

If you’re as sick of their lies and falsehoods as I am, please feel free to reblog this or poste it up on your own Twitter and Facebook pages.

Vox Political: Oxfam Criticised by Charity Commission as ‘Political’ – BBC

Over on Vox Political, Mike reports an item by the BBC that states that a tweet by Oxfam has been criticised for being possibly misconstrued as political campaigning by the Charities Commission. The offending tweet links the growth in poverty to zero hours contracts, high prices, benefit cuts, unemployment and child care costs. Mike’s article is entitled Oxfam criticised by charities watchdog over poverty tweet – BBC News, and is at http://voxpoliticalonline.com/2014/12/21/oxfam-criticised-by-charities-watchdog-over-poverty-tweet-bbc-news/.

This isn’t the first time the forces of the Right have been gunning for the Charity. Way back in the 1980s, according to Lobster, the Belgian intelligence services had the charity under surveillance because they thought it was a Communist organisation. At the same time over here, the Freedom Association, the extreme Right-wing organisation that campaigns for more freedom for the rich, and slavery for everyone else, also complained to the Charity Commission that Oxfam broke the rules about charity’s political neutrality.

It should be obvious that people are being forced into poverty, and frequently desperate poverty, through all the factors named in Oxfam’s tweet. However, as this fortnight’s Private Eye stated, the Tories still deny that benefit cuts is responsible for the rise in poverty. And so because it mentions the facts the government wants to hide, the Charities Commission has judged it is ‘political’.

This shows the true totalitarian nature of the government, where even charities and independent organisations must repeat the government line through pressure and a process of Gleichschaltung, ‘co-ordination’, like that exerted by the Nazis to make sure that all the private associations, corporations and even charities in Germany reflected and carried out the ideology and policies of the Nazi party.

The Sansculotte Programme of 1793

D.G. Wright’s Revolution and Terror in France, 1789-1795 also contains the address the radical sections of the Sansculottes sent to the National Assembly on 2nd September 1793. The sansculottes weren’t all working class, nor were they Socialists, and the address was the closest they ever came to a programme of social and economic reform. Nevertheless, it shows a profound and extremely radical commitment to social equality and is marked by demands for limits to be placed on wealth in the interest of providing for the poor. It runs:

Mandatories of the People – Just how long are you going to tolerate royalism, ambition, egotism, intrigue and avarice, each of them linked to fanaticism, and opening our frontiers to tyranny, while spreading devastation and death everywhere? How long are you going to suffer food-hoarders spreading famine throughout the Republic in the detestable hope that patriots will cut each other’s throats and the throne will be restored over our bloody corpses, with the help of foreign despots? You must hurry for there is no time to lose … the whole universe is watching you; humanity reproaches you for the troubles which are devastating the French Republic. Posterity will damn your names in future if you do not speedily find a remedy. … You must hurry, representatives of the people, to deprive all former nobles, priests, parlementaires and financiers of all administrative and judicial responsibility; also to fix the price of basic foodstuffs, raw materials, wages, and the profits of industry and commerce. You have both the justification and the power to do so. To speak plainly! To talk of aristocrats, royalists, moderates and counter-revolutionaries is to draw attention to property rights, held to be sacred and inviolable … no doubt; but do these rogues ignore the fact that property rights are confined to the extent of the satisfaction of physical needs? Don’t they know that nobody has the right to do anything that will injure another person? What could be more harmful than the arbitrary power to increase the price of basic necessities to a level beyond the means of seven eighths of the citizens? … do they not realize that every individual in the Republic must employ his intelligence and the strength of his arms in the service of the Republic, and must spill his blood for her to the very last drop? In return, the Republic should guarantee to each citizen the means of sufficient basic necessities to stay alive.

Would you not agree that we have passed a harsh law against hoarders? Representatives of the people, do not let the law be abused … this law, which forces those with large stocks of foodstuffs to declare their hoard, tends to favour hoarders more than it wipes out hoarding; it puts all their stocks under the supervision of the nation, yet permits them to charge whatever price their greed dictates. Consequently the general assembly of the Section des Sans Culottes considers it to be the duty of all citizens to propose measures which seem likely to bring about a return of abundance and public tranquillity. It therefore resolves to ask the Convention to decree the following:

1. That former nobles will be barred from military careers and every kind of public office; that former parlementaires, priests and financiers will be deprived of all administrative and judicial duties.

2. That the price of basic necessities be fixed at the levels of 1789-90, allowing for differences in quality.

3. That the price of raw materials, level of wages and profits of industry and commerce also be fixed, so that the hard-working man, the cultivator and the trader will be able to procure basic necessities, and also those things which add to their enjoyment.

4. That all those cultivators who, by some accident, have not been able to harvest their crop, be compensated from public funds.

5. That each department be allowed sufficient public money to ensure that the price of basic foodstuffs will be the same for all citizens of the Republic.

6. That the sums of money allowed to departments be used to eradicate variations in the price of foodstuffs and necessities and in the cost of transporting them to all parts of the Republic, so that each citizen is equal in these things.

7. That existing leases be cancelled and rents fixed at the levels of 1789-90, as for foodstuffs.

8. That there be a fixed maximum on personal wealth.

9 That no single individual shall possess more than the declared maximum.

10 That nobody be able to lease more land than is necessary for fixed number of ploughs.

11. That no citizen shall possess more than one workshop or retail shop.

12. That all who possess goods and land without legal title be recognised as proprietors.

The Section des Sans Culottes thinks that these measures will created abundance and tranquillity, and will, little by little, remove the gross inequalities of wealth and multiply the number of proprietors. (pp. 118-20).

It’s very much of it’s time, but some of it is still relevant to today. There are struggling small farmers in Britain, who need support from the government if they are to survive. In the corporative 1960s and ’70s, the government did pursue and prices and incomes policy, to make sure that wages matched the price of goods. There is a problem where prices have risen while the government and industrialists have kept wages low and frozen, so that some families are finding it difficult to make ends meet. The same also applies to another necessity that didn’t exist in the late 18th century: electricity. The Labour party announced that if it won the election, it would freeze electricity prices. A few months or so ago one of the electricity companies also announced that they were not going to raise their prices due to the fact that there was so much indignation at the cost of electricity when people were finding it difficult to pay for it.

As for limits on personal wealth and the number of businesses one should own, even though governments wish to promote successful industries and businesses, the policies can still be justified. It is obscene that the pay for company directors, elite bankers and the extremely rich has risen colossally, while the majority of workers have either had their wages frozen or their pay actually cut. The Japanese have a law which expressly states that company directors and chairmen may only enjoy a salary at a set, maximum level above the average wages of their workers. Japan is now one of the very largest economies in the world, and in many respects it is a ruthlessly capitalistic culture. Yet Japanese culture also stresses the importance of harmony and consensus. The law setting a ceiling for managers’ salaries was deliberately introduced in order to create an orderly, middle-class, harmonious society with little extremes of wealth. It’s questionable whether this has been successful, given the rise in unemployment due to the massive Japanese slump, and the appalling conditions endured by outcast groups such as the ‘Village People’ and Japanese Koreans.

It’s also the case that the actual number of businesses trading in the high street is contracting as more and more local businesses are forced out or taken over by the big firms. In Stokes Croft in Bristol four years ago there were riots due to the opening of yet another branch of Sainsbury’s, which threatened to put the local grocers and supermarkets out of business. The increasing homogeneity of the high street has attracted media attention and discussion. There has even been discussion of laws to prevent too many of the same brand of supermarket from opening in the same area.

If the Sansculottes were around now, this man would not be in government.

And finally, considering the present government, you can well sympathise with the Sansculotte proposal to exclude nobles and financiers from government. The present government is, after all, composed by aristos and financiers, working on behalf of aristos, financiers and big business against the poor.

As I said in my last post, we could do with rediscovering a little bit more of the Sansculotte commitment to genuine democracy and egalitarianism.